The High Court has dismissed a judicial review challenge to a decision refusing an application by a Pakistani man to be recognised as a permitted family member of his UK-citizen brother under EU free-movement rules.
Mr Justice Richard Humphreys ruled on 10 June 2020 that the Minister for Justice had a sufficiently solid factual basis for the refusal and had complied with the required procedural safeguards. The court did not rehear the application or decide the underlying facts afresh; it considered whether the Minister’s decision was lawful.
The applicants were brothers. The judgment says the first applicant made some payments to the second in 2012 and 2013, with the last dated 12 July 2013. The second applicant left Pakistan in April 2015 and travelled to Dublin. He applied for a visa as an EU citizen’s family member the following month. After an initial refusal and unsuccessful review, an earlier judicial review ended in a consent order quashing the decision. The Minister reconsidered the matter and refused the review on 25 April 2018. That refusal was the subject of this case.
The applicants argued that evidence of regular payments over a significant period could demonstrate financial dependency, and that the refusal was irrational, beyond the Minister’s powers and inadequately reasoned. The judge rejected the claim that the amount of money transferred, measured against Pakistan’s average income, established dependency. He said the relevant questions included whether support was regular and necessary to meet essential needs, and whether a real dependency existed when the applicant left his country of origin. Nearly two years had passed since the last recorded payment.
The judgment records that the Minister accepted the applicants were brothers, were living together at the time of the decision, and that the first applicant was exercising EU treaty rights. The Minister also accepted some evidence of earlier payments and later payments for GP bills. But the judge said later medical bills did not establish dependency at the time the second applicant left Pakistan.
The Minister’s concerns included the absence of evidence that the brothers had shared a household in Pakistan, that the second applicant ultimately received money routed through relatives or friends, or that the support met his essential needs. The decision also referred to inconsistencies and verification problems in the accounts of transfers involving two intermediaries.
The judge held that the Minister’s conclusions were open on the material presented and that the reasons, read as a whole, made the broad basis for the decision clear. He dismissed the proceedings. The judgment does not state what action, if any, was taken under a separate immigration notice issued with the 2018 decision.